Roger Ariew is Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy, at the University of South Florida. He is the author of Descartes and the Last Scholastics (Cornell U P, 1999), coauthor of Historical Dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy (Scarecrow Press, 2003), editor and translator of such works as Descartes, Philosophical Essays (Hackett, 2000) and Pascal, Pensées (Hackett, 2005), and editor of the quarterly journal Perspectives on Science: Historical, Philosophical, Social (MIT Press). He is currently working on the reception of Descartes' philosophy and science in late seventeenth-century France. He will act as a session chair at the conference.

Jean-Paul Sartre was the author of several texts on Tintoretto but also on artists such as Masson, Calder, Giacometti, Lapoujade, Rebeyrolle, David Hare; artists with whom he socialized and even maintained a close friendship. Sartre's unique approach of the works of these artists, fed upon his intimate knowledge of his friends' biographies, reveals some characteristic aspects of Sartre's philosophy. Are the analytical tools and method used by Sartre in his iconographical commentaries still appropriate for a twenty-first century approach of contemporary art? Do they contribute to a better understanding of present-day art? The purpose of my paper is to assess how much of Sartre as interpreter of pictorial artworks has survived beyond clichés.

Else Marie Bukdahl, D. Phil: Former president of The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts (1985-2005), Head of the Department of Art History (1980-2007) of the same; Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters (1985) and of the Norwegian Royal Academy (2007); Officier des Palmes Académiques (1987); Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1998); Books include: Diderot, critique d'art. 2. vols (1980-1982); since 1982 co-editor in Paris of Les oeuvres complètes de Diderot; "Stig Brøgger "Limits of the Unpredictable" in exp. cat. Some Works (1987); The French Academy. Classicism and its Antagonists (1990); The Baroque. A Recurrent Inspiration (1993), Caspar David Friedrich (2005); The Golden Islamic Age in Spain (texts in Arabic); Contributor among things to: The French Academy. Classicism and its Antoganists (1990); Dictionnaire européen des Lumières (1997); The Roots of Neo-classicim (2004); Art and Science (texts in Arabic) (2006).

“ Lyotard between Philosophy and Art” For more than three decades now, several of the French "postmodern philosophers" have been highly influential in both aesthetic reflection and the visual arts. This is notable because their thought makes no separation between images and concept. This opening has led not only to an intensification of the creative forces of cognition in art and philosophy but also to a more nuanced understanding of the varied possibilities, as well as the limitations for artistic expression, both in visual and verbal language. Lyotard has no doubt that the modern emancipation project, originating in the Enlightenment and perpetuated in Marx’s dream of global human emancipation, has lost its credibility in the last three decades. The reason for this is that it has frequently been realized in a caricatured guise, leading to oppression. In The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard calls this project “the grand narrative” (“le grand récit”). In our time – in the postmodern condition – “the grand narratives” of knowledge and power have broken down; this project has also been powerless in the face of the information society’s digital universe. Lyotard not only analyzed society’s distinct changes of the conditions for knowledge and abilities, his work is consumed with arriving at a form of knowledge he calls “the little narrative” (“le petit récit”) or “postmodern knowledge,” which, as he sees it, “is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable. Its principle is not the expert’s homology, but the inventor’s paralogy. Three years after The Postmodern Condition was published in French, in 1979, Lyotard finished an essay, “Painting the Secret in the Postmodern Age, Baruchello” (“La pittura del segreto nell’epoca postmoderna, Baruchello,” 1982), positing that, exempting the digital genres, the signs and symbols painters and sculptors employ cannot precisely and intensely be translated through concepts or information-technology media. Such artistic devices he calls “stockpiles of narrative energy.” Analyzing the art of Gianfranco Baruchello, Lyotard describes how art contains another, more expansive perspective that, referring to Kant, he calls “the sublime,” defining it as “a break that occurs like the crash of a meteorite onto the surface of the book – this is the ontological earthquake that modernity is all about.” Everything that the imagination cannot sum up in a single impression – e.g. the stormswept sea, the infinitely great, the formless – arouses a sensation of the sublime. In his essay, “Answering the Question: What Is the Postmodern?” Lyotard specifies his interpretation of “the sublime,” while setting out his analysis of “the postmodern” and “modernity”: “It is in the aesthetic of the sublime that modern art […] finds its impetus and the logic of avant-gardes finds its axioms. “For the artist, the experience of the sublime produced by the encounter with the infinitely great means a liberation from pre-established models. In the attempt to grasp the absolute great – that which cannot be visualized – new principles for artistic creation are discovered. As a case in point, Lyotard mentions Malevich’s squares. The various neo-expressionist currents that emerge in the 1980s are inspired by Lyotard’s analysis of the information society and his interpretation of it in the exhibition Les Immatériaux (1985). This particularly involves American New Image, German Heftige Malerei, French Figuration libre, Italian Transavantgardia, and Danish Savage Painting. However, he looks in vain in these movements for traces of “the postmodern,” which he defines as “that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself […] that which searches for new presentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable.” Artists who seek the experimental – e.g., Daniel Buren and Joseph Kosuth – “are working without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done. Hence the fact that the work and text have the character of an event.” In a 1985 essay, “The Sublime and the Avant-Garde,” Lyotard amends and expands his interpretation of “the sublime.” Inspired by Burke’s reading of “the sublime” and Barnett Newman’s view – in theory and practice – that “the Sublime is now,” Lyotard construes “the sublime” as “a symbol of artistic creation and of Creation itself.” Lyotard was highly interested in contemporary Danish artists and had discussions with several, including the sculptors Hein Heinsen and Mogen Møller and the painters Albert Mertz, Stig Brøgger and Dorte Dahlin. All, in their own ways, are inspired by his interpretations of “the sublime” and his aesthetics per se. In “After the Sublime, the State of Aesthetics” (1988), Lyotard reveals new traces of the activity of “the sublime” in visual art. As he points out, during the experience of “the sublime,” certain qualities of matter imperceptibly slip into the artwork and there become present, appearing as nuances or “timbres.” They are an untouchable zone in art, containing qualities that are not available to dialogue and dialectic. They are present but can never be translated into any of the ruling discourses in social and cultural space. Of all the “postmodern French philosophers,” Jean-François Lyotard is the one who was most involved with the visual arts. Widely inspired by visual artists, he, in turn, influenced their view of art, as well as their artistic activities, in a multitude of ways. Quite forcefully, he emancipated visual art from all ideological ties, clearly bringing out its creative and experimental aspects. Consequently, visual art has enjoyed better opportunities for crossing pre-established boundaries, opening up new frontiers, revealing the unexpected and – in new ways and on its own terms – inspiring ethical and social thought.

Curtis L. Carter is professor of Aesthetics, Marquette University Department of Philosophy, USA, Founding Director and chief Curator Haggerty Museum of Art 1984-2007. First Vice President International Aesthetics Association, 2007. Author of essays on aesthetics of visual arts, aesthetics of dance, curator and catalogue essayist for modern and contemporary art exhibitions including retrospectives of Jean Fautrier and Wifredo Lam. Recent essays on "Avant Garde and Media Arts," "Aesthetics into the Future," "Changing Influences on the Practices of Contemporary Art," and "Dance: Perspectives of the Aesthian and the Performer," "A History of Aesthetics 1966-2006" "Nelson Goodman: Philosopher and Performance." Frequent lecturer international conferences, visiting scholar Beijing universities 2007.

“Philosopher and Artist: Unsettled Boundaries” The problem of a philosopher’s relation to the artist recurs again and again throughout the history of philosophy. In ancient Greece, Plato’s writings suggest his ambivalence toward the role of the artists in his society. In ancient Chinese culture, the roles of philosopher and artist appear often to be merged into one as success as an artist requires mastery in philosophical wisdom, poetic intuition, and graphic imagination. Echoing in part the views of Plato, Hegel, writing in the nineteenth century also maintains a division between the roles of philosopher and artist, and holds that the philosopher supercedes the artist in the hierarchy of access to knowledge. The context of a conference on French philosophers and contemporary art offers a fruitful venue in which to consider the topic, “Philosopher and Artist: Unsettled Boundaries,” in the context of the recent thought. There are numerous important pairings of philosophers and artists working together during recent times. The result is a body of materials for examining anew the boundaries between the work of philosopher and artist with respect to their collaborations in the quest for human understanding. Merleau Ponty’s writings on painting, including his well known discussion of Cezanne’s approach to painting in “Cezanne’s Doubt,” offers a phenomenological account of the respective roles of philosopher and artist. He assigns to painting an ontological status with the task of presenting an imaginative access to the forms of phenomena in pre-theoretical experience. Yet he stops short of assigning equal weight to philosopher and artist. The focus here will be on the relation of André Malraux and Jean Paulhan with the artist Jean Fautrier and between Gilles Deleuze’s writings and the paintings of the artist Francis Bacon. Malraux and Paulhan were intimately engaged in dialogue with the artist Fautrier, and helped to place his art in the context of French philosophical debates concerning the visual and literary arts. Deleuze considers the conceptual and cultural interface of philosopher in general and in reference to Bacon’s approach to painting. He regards philosophy and art, together with science, each as creative endeavors of equal standing. His view, supported by in depth analysis of Bacon’s painting and his studies in cinema and other art forms, is that philosopher and artist serve as mediators to one another, helping each other to express themselves in the process of their respective creations. The brief examination of the philosophers and artists in question led to no decisive answer to the question of boundaries between philosopher and artist. It does suggest that the boundaries are more elastic and flexible between the two than most philosophers or artists might suppose. There is little doubt that the philosopher who seriously engages the finest artists of his time will be better equipped to generate a deeper understanding of the foundations of human knowledge than otherwise discernable using only the resources of philosophy.

Dominique Château (Thèse d’Etat, 1988 : La Philosophie de l’art comme synthèse critique) is University Professor at Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne. His main interest is aesthetics, theory of art and film studies. He has written extensively on the definition of art, visual arts, and the philosophical approach of cinema.

"On Some Atmospheric Relations between French Philosophy and Contemporary Art": Following Arthur Danto when, defining artworld, he says that art requires "an atmosphere of artistic theory," my lecture grounds on the assumption that French philosophy may be considered as contributing to the atmosphere of contemporary art theory. But what concerns me is not only French philosophy as such, as it is in French, but French philosophy as it results after its transformation through American culture; moreover, I will consider the feedback of this change on French philosophy in its native context. Text in English and French.

"What’s New on the Markey of Open Ideas?: Some remarks on the role of supply and demand on the contemporary conditions of art" Philosophical ideas and theories play a significant part in the present artworld. This paper aims to investigate what it means for philosophy to play such a part, and what needs philosophy fits. Is there an artistic “demand,” and what does it consist of? What does philosophy supply for responding to it, and what is philosophy able to supply? What is at stake, and what advantage can art and philosophy derive from such a deal?

Dorte Dahlin and Joachim Hamou Dorte Dahlin, visual artist, founder and general coordinator of Nomad Academy Copenhagen, was born in 1955, and lives and works in Copenhagen. She was educated at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts 1978-82 and became one of the central figures in the break-through of New Image/Wild Painting in Denmark. The past 10 years she has been working in the field of site-specific art, sculpting in public spaces in all aspects of the word.

Joachim Hamou is a visual artist living in Copenhagen. He is primarily working with video narratives. Joachim is involved in many collaborations, notably the creation of the first Danish artist driven TV station, tv-tv. He is also involved in many interdisciplinary collaborations such as urban empowerment projects with Urban Task Force in Copenhagen or theater project with Uppsala Stadsteater in Sweden. See more updated information on hamou.org.

" A Visual Note for a Lost Manuscript" A video artwork by Joachim Hamou and Dorte Dahlin Production: Nomad Academy, 2007 (15 min) The jumping-off point of the video artwork is a collaboration between painter Dorte Dahlin and videoartist Joachim Hamou. It is based on their 6 shorter and sampled anecdotes/poems relating to experiences of Revelation, the Arab World, Lost Distance, Speed, Chinese painting, Rubber-geometry, etc. The stories are recorded in English by Indian and Afro American actors, so the stories will be experienced as ”Global Travelling Stories,” being transformed by local circumstances such as nationality, gender, age, accent, space, vocal pitch, etc. Presenting the videonote supports the idea of an open source collaboration between people/artists of different faculties, cultural and civil backgrounds - when meeting on cultural, social and political (environmental) issues, using art as a non-imperialistic/democratic tool of action. The videonote exemplifies the working strategy of Nomad Academy.

"Art and Economy: An Aesthetic Trouble" There are two questions associated with the relations between art and the economy. They define the issues of a theoretical debate. The first one concerns the political virtues (or not) of these artistic practices that turn the system’s principles against the system itself: “Can art use business’s own arguments and own means in order to disclose the ways business works?” The second, which is complementary to the first, points to a paradox since it questions the way in which industry supports an art world whose propositions are often critical of its methods, the different functions of art in the economic context. To answer these questions needs to formulate a hypothesis of separation. Meaning that art and the economy belong to two separate spheres. To postulate that art and the economy necessarily belong to different sets is to immediately detach the artist from the economic sphere, so that he would therefore consider it from the point of view of an outside observer. This hypothesis is commonly held: it is based on a definition of the artist as an interpreter. The economic sphere, on this view, is but one of the areas of which he can make a reading. He could just as well look at science, sport, medicine or social phenomena – as he indeed does. The distance that he enjoys in this activity endows the artist-cum-interpreter’s position with a necessarily critical dimension, which ensures that there is a transition in his practice between observation and action. According to this hypothesis of “separation”, the question of the relation between art and the economy is already settled in advance: art, as a locus of critique, will also be the place for the critique of the economy. And, if we accept the validity of this proposition, then the economic sphere will be ideally positioned both to solicit and to receive this critique. In accordance with a conversational model in which the answer is addressed first and foremost to the person who asks the question, the artist will speak to the economy as the adviser speaks to the Prince or the Fool to the King. But can we rest content with this first vision, which eliminates all trace of bilaterality from the relation between economics and art? That would be hard. This equation of an “a priori separation” is underpinned by two presuppositions which themselves rest on two debatable postulates: on the one hand, the existence of an art system that encompasses all artistic practices; on the other, that of an economic system encompassing all economic practices. These two systems are seen as being autonomous and interfering only in that specific instance when the subject of art is the economy and the object of the economy is art. The problem must be reconsidered, in terms of “trouble in aesthetics.”

"Philosophy troubled by the thousand-and-one figures of beauty" If Greek genius created the sculptural paradigm of beauty in the sense of the harmony of spirit and body, of divinity and mankind, it did so by giving it an infinity of specific figures likely to celebrate its esthetic, democratic and polytheistic order. To this versatile beauty that imperils the city of the just, Plato opposes the sublime beauty of his Phaedra which only the philosopher may reach, and the enlightening beauty of The Republic that is accessible to all citizens. Following Plato's "natural philosopher", both Hegel's and Kant's aesthetics sacrifice pluralist beauty to the benefit of the monotheist Sublime. In many ways, we can say that modernity reveals the same hatred of beauty, compromised as it is in this or that political system. By giving back to beauty its ironic and nonchalant face, postmodern pluralism today invites philosophy to detach itself from the mirages of the sublime and to reconnect with aesthetics and the humanities.

Carol J. Murphy is Professor of French in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Florida and Director of the France-Florida Research Institute. Her publications include books on Marguerite Duras, Julien Gracq, a translation of Jean Paulhan's essay on Jean Fautrier, Fautrier l'enragé, and numerous articles on contemporary French authors and filmmakers. She recently co-edited two issues of Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, on "Verbal, Visual, Virtual: New Canons for the Twenty-First Century." She serves on the Editorial Boards of The French Review and French Forum. She will act as a session chair at the conference.

Anthony Wall is “University Professor” for French and Literary Theory at the University of Calgary (Canada). Recent publications include Ce corps qui parle : pour une lecture dialogique de Denis Diderot (2005) and “Curiosity Printed on Several Faces, Including Diderot’s” (Diderot Studies XXX, 2007).

"Frank Stella, lecteur de Diderot" To what extent is it possible to say of Frank Stella’s “Diderot Series” that his geometric configurations are in any way describable as readings of Diderot’s writing, either his novelistic texts or his philosophical treatises? While clearly several contemporary artists, painters and sculptors alike (Glenn Brown and Yinka Shonibare) can be shown to re-read, for example, the painted work of the Eighteenth-Century icon Jean-Honoré Fragonard, something more complicated than a re-make – or a re-paint – occurs in the case of Frank Stella who in his visual art seeks neither to illustrate nor to re-do Diderot the writer. There is of course the problem of transmedial reconfiguration, which presents itself rather noticeably in the case of Frank Stella reading Diderot, something only marginally valid in the cases of our painter-sculptors re-doing Fragonard. Because Stella is putting into images the verbal titles (if not the verbal works themselves) we have an interesting series of cases for which it is altogether appropriate to prod Paul Ricoeur’s thinking on reconfiguration. This we propose to do in a dialogue presented in vivo.